Case Study: Writing a Compelling Mission Statement

Purpose or mission driven businesses are not only more satisfying to start, run and be employed at; they also tend to significantly outperform their competitors financially.

So I’ve been thinking a bit about mission or purpose driven businesses recently. There are more and more examples coming out where mission or purpose driven organizations are outperforming their competition.

In fact, two of the books I am reading right now touch on this very concept from a client attraction and retention perspective.

The first is “Getting Naked” by Patrick Lencioni; about shedding the three fears that sabotage client loyalty. Releasing the fears is about becoming more authentic, losing the attachment we have to our “expert” image and coming from a place of serving.

The second is “Attracting Perfect Customers” by Stacey Hall and Jan Brogniez. I’ve just started this one but the premise is that the more clear you are about your mission and who you serve, the more clients will be able to find you instead of you spending huge amounts of effort and money finding them. Yes, a little on the Law of Attraction side of things but it is also about taking action to make it happen.

The point here is that knowing clearly what you do and who you do it for; will allow you to reach those people with much less effort.

So I started out with a review our original mission as recorded in Manifast.

“To help people achieve success at their full potential.”

We still believe in this but the mission is a little too broad and doesn’t draw in perfect clients. The problem is that “everyone” could be a client and realistically, a lot of people either don’t want help or don’t want to achieve success at their full potential.

Over the past 6 months we’ve refined things quite a bit.

Ideal Clients

High Grow Companies: Our perfect clients are actually businesses that are serious about growing and have hit that wall; going from incremental growth to high growth or scaling. They need to move from “make it up as you go” to a more systematized model of running a business including getting the business running and growing without being limited by a few key people; especially the owners.

This doesn’t mean that lots of other businesses can’t or won’t use our services. In fact there are two other groups of business that would benefit greatly from our primary focus.

Succession or Sale: Businesses that are currently moving from one leadership team to another need to get the business running without them. As well, if you are selling a business and have a few years of predictable results without a lot of key person exposure, your business will sell for more.

Serious Start-ups: The biggest issue for start-ups is the definition of a start-up, that is they have not yet found a big enough market for their stuff and are not yet profitable. This generally means that they need help, but can’t afford to get help. They also tend to get into this habit of do it yourself. However, there is a small percentage of start-ups who are either well-funded or understand that investing in some help up-front will help them grow faster.

Our Strengths

This is where you look at what it is you do well, what talents your team and any systems or tools you have that give you an advantage.

For our team it is two big things:

Seeing the Big Picture: This is your overall strategy, what matters most to your business and how the key pieces interact.

Relationships between Pieces and Systems: This is about taking the big picture and being able to see, understand and improve how everything works together; tactics and systems tied back to the strategy.

We’ve also created an entire working on your business system and a software tool to enable that critical piece of business planning… taking it from strategy to implementation.

Putting It All Together – The Mission

The mission is all about the service or value you provide to your ideal clients. How do you serve in exchange for monetary compensation?

As mentioned, the original mission started as: “To help people achieve success at their full potential.”

Looking at the thought around clients, problems and strengths:

Who do we help?

What problem do we solve?

How do we play to our strengths?

This isn’t a unique value (or selling) proposition. This is your mission or purpose. Purpose is something people can share. It brings likeminded people together.

Ours may continue to evolve over time but our new and improved mission is now:

“Helping small and mid-sized businesses, and the people in them, grow to their full potential.”

We believe we will make a huge difference in the world over time because small businesses are where a lot of innovation happens and jobs are created. The impact multiplication factor is huge.

Ultimately we are passionate about bringing our skills, tools and talents; in any way we can conceive to accomplish this mission.

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Doug Wagner is an entrepreneur, President and Co-founder of Sunwapta Solutions. Sunwapta's mission is to help businesses transform from surviving to thriving, sustainable growth. From strategy to implementation, this means marketing, sales, managing your brand and delivering consistent value. Get more clients and keep them.